Achievements

When I was a student, an achievement was a finished thesis, a perfected cheat sheet (with scribblings so small that my eyes had a permanent squint after exams), a believable drawing, or a "good comment there, Fisher" from a professor.  Outside of the classroom, 150 lbs benched, a date in the dining hall with that quirky philosophical girl from English 203/small group/frat party, and the consumption of more than 5 shots of J. Cuervo without puking – those were reasons to celebrate.

When I was a banker, achievements – mine and the deal – were usually bullet-pointed.  Examples (and I apologize to the shrieking voice inside of me curled up in fetal position from these memories and readers who wade through the jargon):

• The percentile and numerical stat aligned perfect next to the pie/line/bar chart
• All the pages in the pitchbook are used (senior bankers often cover their asses by requiring the grunt – me – to do more analysis than necessary and relegating those to a 'standby' section at the back of the presentation. Let's say each page will take, mmm.. 45 minutes. Times 20 pages)
• Data entry for a comp (comparable analysis) of, let's say... 12 companies is done under two hours, giving me just enough time to stumble home and catch the 3 am re-run of SportsCenter
• The assholes at the printer will have the 30 books bound in time — and there are no i) last minute change in numbers (e.g 15.2% vs 15.0%) ii) all the pages are sequentially ordered and iii) the client's name is spelled correctly
• F7 solved the hairball in the model
• Some other analyst putz will get the onerous task of compiling covenant comps (shudder)
• And more of the same insanely innate items that makes no difference to anyone except to push me one step closer a mental asylum

I've already posted about what a normal day would be from my last job at a tech-ish co. 

A supreme (and very personally satisfying) achievement was to convince one of my clients to step up their game, to be creative – to be fearless.  This is harder than it seems. The voice on the other end of the telephone was in most cases attached to a pseudo-individual, a cog of a multi-national, designed not to rock the boat, not to speak up, not to draw attention to themselves. 

Sometimes they were in India, or Singapore, or Spain.  Often, they were in Chicago, or Houston, or Raleigh.  But they all cowered in their cubicles, thankful that the powers above have granted them the paltry departmental budget for that quarter and a job surrounded by gray walls, white marker boards, and Cisco phones. 

The awesome (neat!) thing was that they had the utmost arrogance at their position – because they couched their conformity in high-sounding rhetoric that usually ended with, "Well, why don't we table this issue until, let say, our next meeting? I'll have to check with the director.. so I'll circle back with you over email? Right. Until then!" The most important thing about a meeting is that you have to come away with another meeting to discuss the current and prior meetings. Essential.

Nowadays? I'll just mention yesterday.  Yesterday, my achievement was a green Thai curry. I found a recipe from the web, and I survived another harrowing bargaining experience with the vendors in the marketplace. It's like walking into a gladiator ring where all the lions and tigers know your moves, surrounded by eyes in the hundreds.  I came out with dinner for less than four bucks. I wrote 750 words.  I bought DVDs for Capote, Munich and The Squid and Whale for less than $4. Malaysia researched, a new pho place found, and I woke up before 10 am.

Success comes in unremarkable packages here.